Topic 1: EQ3 Flashcards
Do many tectonic hazards turn into disasters?
Very few tectonic hazards manifest themselves into disasters. For example, during the period of 2004-14 tectonic hazards had a low occurrence compared to hydrological and meteorological hazards, and they also have a much lower number of victims compared to the other three hazards (climatological, hydrological, and meteorological).
What are the 4 categories of hazards?
-Climatological
-Geophysical
-Hydrological
-Meteorological
What long-term natural hazard trends can be seen since the 1960s?
-The total (aggregate) number of recorded hazards has increased.
-The number of reported disasters seems to be falling, having peaked in the early 2000s.
-The number of deaths is lower than in the past, but there are spikes with mega-events.
-The total number of people affected is increasing for some hazard and disaster types, especially meteorological and hydrological
-The economic costs associated with both hazards and disasters has increased significantly.
What are climatological events?
Extreme temperatures, droughts and wildfires
What are hydrological events?
Floods and mass movement
What are meteorological events?
Tropical storms, extra-tropical storms, conventive storms and local storms.
What are geophysical events?
Earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity.
How have the different types of hazards increased since 1980?
Although tectonic hazards have predominantly remained the same, the other types (especially hydrological and meteorological) appear to be increasing.
How does the trend of geophysical hazards differ from the general trend?
In terms of the number of events, it is much more stable, but the number of people affected and number of deaths varies significantly year on year.
Why is the spatial variation of tectonic hazards important?
It is wrong to assume that the locations of hazard impacts will always translate into simple distributions. Data shows there is a complex pattern based off of both world regions and levels of development.
Why can disaster statistics be controversial?
-Depends on whether both primary and secondary deaths are included.
-Local or regional events in remote places are often under-recorded.
-Can be political bias.
-Stats on major disasters can be extremely difficult to collect
-Time-trend analysis is difficult due to the dependence on intervals selected and whether the methods of collecting the data remain constant. Can be upset by clusters of mega-disasters, e.g the 2011 Haiti Earthquake.
What is an example of disaster statistics being vulnerable to political bias?
The 2004 Asian tsunami was almost completely ignored in Myanmar, but also overstated in parts of Thailand, where foreign tourists were killed. This was then played down to protect the Thai tourism industry
What is an example of disaster stats being hard to collect for remote rural areas of low economic development?
In the densely populated squatted settlements of the 2003 Caracas landslides.
What are the characteristics of tectonic mega-disasters?
-They’re usually large-scale disasters on a aerial or spatial scale, as well as their economic and human impact.
-Their scale poses a serious problem for effective management to minimise both the short and long term impacts, and international aid is often required.
Events will often affect multiple countries (either directly or indirectly).
Why is it an issue that tectonic mega-events are often high-impact, low-probability?
This means that there are one-off high profile crises such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Due to the low likelihood of occurrence, but the extremely high cost of mitigation actions, regions often are extremely ill-prepared for the event which follows.
For good measure, they’re also extremely difficult to predict.
How do tectonic mega disasters cause economic issues globally?
The globalisation of supply chains and production has reduced industry resilience to these events. Hugh-value manufacturing is at risk due to its just-in-time business model. Therefore, a disaster in one location causes major impacts on the other parts of the supply chain in other regions. The Tohoku 2011 earthquake caused a 5% fall in Japan’s GDP, but for TNCs such as Toyota and Sony, production was forced to completely halt.
What was the Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland volcano?
In March 2010, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted for the first time in 190 years. It began to affect much of Europe, spreading as far as Northern Italy. It was, however, a relatively small eruption, with no direct deaths, just ‘in the wrong place’.
This grounded flights in most of Europe for days, and 100,000 air journeys were cancelled.
What was the affect of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on the global supply chain?
Due to the shutdown of the air travel, imports and exports into and out of Europe were greatly effected. In the UK, airfreight accounts for 25% of UK trade by value.
High value components in the car manufacturing industry caused firms such as Nissan to halt production, as sensors produced in Ireland couldn’t travel to factories.
What was the impact of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on the transport of perishable goods?
There were impacts on the producers of perishable goods in African countries such as Kenya. The delays in transportation meant that large quantities of fast-perishing produce rotted, leading to losses for producers. The world bank estimated that this will of cost African nations US$65million.
What was the Tohoku tsunami, Japan?
A 9.0 magnitude earthquake in March 2011 produced a tsunami which wrecked the east coast of Japan.
What were the regional impacts of the Tohoku tsunami?
-15,749 died
-4000 missing
-Large scale Destruction of properties along the coast, as well as damage to infrastructure and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, causing contaminated water to leak from the plant into the the Pacific Ocean and into fishing grounds.
What were the global impacts of the Tohoku tsunami, Japan?
Because Japans demand for LNG energy rose, the price of LNG increased significantly. This had the biggest impact in the Asian market, where they had the quickest rate of increasing energy consumption.
It also caused social concern surrounding nuclear power, and caused nations such as Germany to immediately shut down some of their reactors. It also caused the cost of nuclear power to rise globally, as additional safety measures had to be put in place.
What were the global environmental impacts of Tohoku?
-The radioactive debris in the water reached the coast of North America.
-Chemicals from debris of collapsing buildings were released into the atmosphere, affecting stratospheric ozone and global warming.
-One person in California was killed by Tsunami waves reached America.
What was the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami?
A 9.1 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami over 100 feet tall when it reached land. Affected many countries surrounding the ocean, such as Sri Lanka and India, and killed over 200,000 people. These deaths were from people of 46 nations, as tourists were also killed, including 543 from Sweden.
What were the economic impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami?
-The damages were estimated at US$9.4 billion.
-600,000 lost their jobs
-Affected the supply chains of many raw materials which are exported from these SE Asian nations.
Do earthquakes and volcanoes cause many deaths?
Only 2.2% of fatalities from natural hazards are due to earthquakes, and only 0.1% are due to volcanoes.
The majority of deaths result from the slow onset hazards such as droughts and famine, rather than the rapid onset hazards.
What is a HILP event
High impact, low probability.
Tectonic mega events are often classified as this.
What are multiple hazard zones?
These are places where a number of physical hazards combine to create an increased risk for the country and its population. This is often made worse if the country’s population is vulnerable, or suffers repeated events so that there is no extended periods of time for recovery.
These places, such as the Philippines, are considered ‘disaster hotspots’.
What is a disaster hotspot?
This is a country or area that is extremely disaster prone.
How are hazards in multiple hazard zones linked to vulnerability over geographical space and time?
Being a vulnerable community makes the impacts greater, and also more challenging to manage. The magnitude of the hazard combined with the human geography of the area are important, but the hazards generally form part of a more complex web of socio-economic and environmental issues which make them harder to manage.
Which countries are most exposed to multiple hazards?
Countries in central/South America (eg Costa Rica and Chile) as well as East Asia (e.g Taiwan and the Philippines) seem to be especially vulnerable, as they are at risk of earthquakes, have coasts subject to tsunamis, may regularly experience summer cyclones as well as winter storms.
What % of Taiwan is exposed to multiple hazards?
73.1% of land in Taiwan is exposed to multiple hazard zones, and 73.1% of their population is also exposed to the 4 different hazards faced in this region.
Why are cities (especially mega-cities) at a high disaster risk?
Large urban areas are often zones of multiple, hazard risk. They tend to be centres of economic development, and can often have rapidly growing populations due to urbanisation in developing countries. This means many mega-cities have unplanned, poor quality housing in dangerous locations like river banks and steep slopes.
What 6 factors cause mega cities to have low hazard resilience?
-Concentrated political, economic and other resources.
-High population densities, particularly in old parts of cities, leads to rapid destruction and loss of life.
-Rapid growth and lack of planning causes illegal settlement of poorer people in hazardous areas.
-Ecological imbalance as rapid urbanisation destroyed ecosystems.
-High dependency on infrastructure and services in a disaster period.
-Construction of an inadequate standard.
What two ways can multiple hazard zones occur?
-when one hazard triggers the conditions necessary to make another hazard occur.
-When the hazards are completely unrelated, but occur over a short timeframe.
What physical vulnerabilities make the Philippines a multiple hazard zone?
-Violent, andesitic eruptions (e,g from Mount Mayan) are frequent. 22 active volcanoes
-Earthquakes are also frequent
-Cyclones are frequent and are usually deadly, and are linked to flooding and landslides
-Despite being rare, can have droughts from El Niño events like in 2010
-7107 islands, and is 25% bigger than the UK.
What human vulnerabilities make the Philippines a multiple hazard zone?
-High population, 109 million
-GDP of US$9200, a middle-income nation
-25% of the population lives in poverty, 2.8 million in the Capital city were squatters.
-Rapid urbanisation (urban population went from 40% in 2007 to 45% in 2010),
-Many in the rural areas lived in coastal regions, prone to flooding and storm surges.
What 4 major hazard events occurs in the Philippines?
2006 earthquake (one hazard event)
2013 Earthquake Bohol + 2013 Typhoon Haiyan (different hazards in a short space of time)
